The guest poster is Willis Eschenbach. His argument? Well, rivers don’t run straight to the sea; they meander. Ergo, water doesn’t run downhill in a complex system. Consequently, no global warming. In another place he argues that humans are not metal, therefore, no global warming.

I mean — sweet Mother of Pearl! — this guy even denies the existence of the Army Corps of Engineers, and river straightening:

The results of changes in such a flow system are often counterintuitive. For example, suppose we want to shorten the river. Simple physics says it should be easy. So we cut through an oxbow bend, and it makes the river shorter … but only for a little while. Soon the river readjusts, and some other part of the river becomes longer. The length of the river is actively maintained by the system. Contrary to our simplistic assumptions, the length of the river is not changed by our actions.

No wonder they place all their bets on stealing e-mails from scientists. Somebody show that man the South Platte River through Denver, Colorado, or the Los Angeles River through Los Angeles, or the Mississippi from Arkansas to the Gulf. Somebody give that man a paddle!

Here are a couple of clues: First, water always runs downhill — capillary action being the exception. Eschenbach doesn’t propose capillary action as a driver of river meandering. Any hydrologist will tell you, however, that even a meandering river runs downhill. Second, human beings don’t conduct heat like metal blocks. Even a dead human won’t conduct heat like a copper block, but especially a living human will radiate heat away through several different paths, so that heating the feet of a human will not cause a concomitant rise in temperature of the head. But, heck, if you soak the human’s head in hot water, it won’t warm like a block of steel, either. The examples offered in this piece get pushed past the brink of absurdity. It’s impossible for me to believe that Eschenbach — or Watts — fails to understand the physics so greatly. I can only imagine that they are driven by a fanatic devotion to an idea of the result they hope to see, and that blinds them to the errors they make.

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5 Responses to The unbearable lightness of climate denialist thought

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Water often does flow “uphill”–as it flows downgradient. The meandering river example is a poor one because no mention was made of sediment carried, eroded, and deposited by the river, without which no meandering and channel-shifting would occur.

If the climate models considered only carbon dioxide, they would be hopeless. They are useful because they take into account numerous factors, and are modified as our data and understanding increases.

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